Georgetown Skills Essay Anonymous

“It was a poor election campaign from Lionel Jospin.” I narrowed my eyes in skepticism at the latest sentence in my History essay, searching for a more precise phrase. “It was a consistently underwhelming campaign from Lionel Jospin.” Satisfied that I had fully captured the French politician’s pathetically impotent nature, I moved on, ready to puzzle over the next diction conundrum in my essay.

My fixation on diction first arose while competing in the Spelling Bee, where I pored over definitions, repeated example sentences, and practiced pronunciation to perfection. Combined with my passion for reading, I managed to grasp the nuances of words’ meanings as well as the ideas and emotions they evoke. In a debate tournament, for instance, I might describe military drones dryly as “lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS)” when debating for their implementation and more leeringly as “killer robots” while in opposition.

Choosing the right words may not seem like a very special skill, but it is critically important from a historical perspective. Take the Ems Dispatch, for instance, where Otto von Bismarck of Prussia provoked war with France by altering a message from his king to subtly insult the French government.

Of course, I won’...